Our salvation lies in testing assumptions about history, the nature of matter and energy, and the role of consciousness in the obvious interactions of all aspects of the universe.

Many self-imposed limitations are a function of the story humans tell about themselves. The conventional story propagated by religious institutions and the academic/scientific establishment reflects only a partial understanding of this planet's history and the true nature of conscious beings.

If we are to project viable futures for planet Earth and our solar system, we must correct our understanding of who we are and how we got here. We need rigorously thinking but intellectually open frontier scientists to seek explanations for all human experience and historical evidence. Our salvation lies in testing assumptions about history, the nature of matter and energy, and the role of consciousness in the obvious interactions of all aspects of the universe.

With this expanding perspective we can imagine scenarios that permit us to escape the powerlessness we feel as "creatures of a separate god or random biological determinism." Recognizing that our ancestors were conscious participants in long-wave planetary, or even solarian, developmental cycles, and that we are co-creators of a multidimensional universe, we stop selling ourselves short about our abilities to redirect currently destructive social and technological trends.

This argument and evidence to support such theses are well developed in Solarian Legacy: Metascience & A New Renaissance and similar books. Having spent much of the month of September in Peru, I am struck by the vast amount of evidence of unknown civilizations and cataclysmic earth changes in that area. It is conceivable that a prehistory analogous to that being unveiled by Zecharia Sitchin and others about the Middle East awaits us in the ruins, artifacts, geology and oral history of that center of antiquity in the southern hemisphere. Prejudgments about the nature of primitive societies and the trail of their migrations cause us to ignore newly discovered evidence.

An example is the persistence of the idea that humanity in the Western Hemisphere proceeded from Asia, across a former land bridge to North America, and then to Central and South America after the last Ice Age. The possibility that pre-10,000 BCE civilizations existed in what is now the Andean region is dismissed despite the archaeological evidence and oral history pointing in that direction. The views of Incan and pre-Incan specialists are analogous to those of Egyptologists who cannot countenance the probability that high civilizations antedated the Age of the Pharaohs. Because researchers in Peru have developed a self-limiting scenario of cultural progression based on a partial examination of artifacts and the dating of some settlements, they do not know how to deal with facts that call into question their assumptions.

The implausibility of the Incans constructing the massive and far flung cities and stoneworks (from Sacsahauman to Colombia in the North and Chile to the South) so quickly after their appearance on the scene is not considered because evidence indicates the immediately preceding groups (Chavins, Moches, and Paracas, etc.) could not have done them either. So these magnificent ruins covering thousands of miles and inaccessible areas, evidencing superior technology and undatable because of their stone materials, are all assigned to the Incans. To believe otherwise would raise the possibility that the region was settled in earlier times by people who already had relations with Asia (the common artistic motifs demonstrate it); possessed advanced knowledge of astronomy, botany, and biology; and preceded cataclysmic earth changes.

However, the existence of prehistoric ruins embedded in sedimentary and volcanic rock points to a period of such

antiquity. As parts of the Peruvian coast break apart with the subsidence of tectonic plates, they uncover ruins below the surface, soon to join submerged cities in the Pacific Ocean. These ruins add credence to the legends of a highly civilized but long lost continent in the Pacific that provided a stepping stone between Asia and South America.

Javier Cabrera's publication of interpretations and corroborating evidence regarding the antiquity of and advanced knowledge on a trove of engraved stones from underground chambers in the Plain of Ica describes a prehistory not incompatible with Sitchin's analyses of the Sumerian tablets. While his perspective on the stones reflects his medical (he's a surgeon) and Catholic background, and is considered controversial by many, it provides a more satisfactory explanation for the mass of Andean archaeological and geological evidence than the current academic hypotheses. (Some artisans who have testified that he bought artificial engravings from them also state they believe about half of the Cabrera Museum's stones are authentic, i.e., coming from local sites uncovered by a mid-century flood.)

Machu Picchu is an example of how "partial wisdom" gets perpetuated. Re-discovered in 1911 by an American researcher who had the Spanish version of pre-Columbian history, the complex was labeled a great religious center, and its component parts were given the names of temples, royal homes, priest and priestess quarters, etc. It became known variously as a great Incan religious, military, or political center, despite the fact that contemporary history described it as a largely deserted complex in the 15th and 16th centuries, partially used for raising gardens by local farmers. A careful analysis of its overall size, vulnerability to military siege and diminished space for large religious gatherings, and the scale of its so-called temples, undermines all the conventional assumptions. Its structures and settings are much more compatible with the function of an isolated "university" or center of research and training, not unlike vanquished centers like Timbuktu and others.

Why is correcting our history so important? If history is written by the victors, as some have pointed out, we do not have a true sense of how the present power structures came into being and why we have the current social, political, and economic injustices. Failing to understand the reasons for the status quo leaves us incapable of devising escapes from unsatisfactory circumstances. Re-discovering humanity's long and turbulent history and our nature as inherently equal conscious beings empowers us to assert greater control over our own destinies. "Verily, the truth shall set you free."

Paul Von Ward, MPA & M.S., is a researcher and writer in the fields of metaphysics and frontier science. His most recent book is SOLARIAN LEGACY: Metascience & A New Renaissance, an Oughten House imprint distributed by Medicine Bear Publishing. It is available to individuals in book stores, at www.Amazon.com, or by calling the publisher at 207/374 3831. Paul can be contacted at www.mind.net/solarian.